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Manufacturer Overview

Sony Electronics Inc. has long held a dominant position in the digicam marketplace,
with a wide range of models enjoying enormous popularity with consumers.
Last February (2001), the company announced six new units. Four of these
models included members of the FD Mavica family, enormously popular because
of their floppy disk (and now CD) storage media, while the other two came
from Sony's DSC Cyber-shot line, which relies solely on Sony's proprietary
Memory Stick storage media for capturing images. Since then, Sony has stayed
ahead of the competition with increasingly sophisticated technical innovations,
more competitive prices, and ever larger CCDs. The Cyber-shot DSC-S85, introduced
in June, featured a 4.1-megapixel CCD with 14-bit digitizing and a 3x Carl
Zeiss Zoom lens. Now (August, 2001), Sony has dropped another bombshell,
with the 5-megapixel DSC-F707. This model will go down in history as the
first "Night Vision" digicam, incorporating NightShot technology
(borrowed from Sony's consumer camcorder line) and NightFraming IR mode for
low-light and "no light" framing and shooting. Add to that a Hologram
Autofocus feature that zeros in on difficult low-light, low-contrast subjects,
and you've got one heck of cool camera! We expect that it will raise a lot
of eyebrows among Sony customers (and competitors!). Read on for all the
details, this is a hot one!